Music Info on Windows 8 updated

We looked at this app a while back and even interviewed the creator Johnny Westlake. Essentially it's a music player with some neat discovery abilities, which makes it a welcome change from the supplied Xbox Music app.

The fast and fluid music app picks up a number of improvements as it reaches version 1.0 including metadata editing and a live tile if you’re a paying customer.

Quite simply, if you love music and have a Microsoft Surface tablet you need to buy this app right away. Unlike Xbox Music, its fast and fun to use and has some great ways to find more music. If you want to know more I did a full review of the last version which you should read.

Updates for paid users:

Added: Live Tile for Now Playing Music

Added: (BETA) Basic Metadata editor for individual tracks in Album view. Will be expanded in future builds.

Updates for all users:

Added: Ability to perform non-indexed collection update, useful if not all your tracks show up

Improved: Added some additional error resilience for when music files fail to open properly

The developer has been busy and I’m certainly looking forward to the increased capabilities of the app to handle music organisation. Lots of my music consists of AAC’s m4a files which the app doesn’t seem to recognise but this isn’t proving a huge problem right now.

Reader comments

Music Info on Windows 8 updated

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've not actually experienced any performance problems on my Surface with X-box music myself but I do find it quite irritating at times. The main problem with Xbox music is the way it does not present your local music collection separately from anything it has added by way of streaming. It offers up versions of the same songs to stream in the same album as local versions. If you just want to play an album you'll find yourself eating bandwidth to stream a song which is already in your own collection. It also scatters your collection all over the place in an odd fashion.

This app just grabs your local music (it found music on an SD card on the Surface without me having to tweak things as I had to with Xbox) and presents it really well. Both apps look great but I shall use this going forward for my own music and just use Xbox to stream anything new I want to check out. Hopefully Microsoft will sort Xbox out soon - it could be great and a real selling point but is a pain at the moment.

"Essentially its a music player" is the understatement of the year.
Essentially its what Xbox Music was suppose to be and claims it is.
Fire everyone making decisions with Xbox Music and hire this guy. He has vision and knows what we are all looking for.

This app is OUT-DOGGONE-STANDING!! Without a doubt the best music app on Windows 8. Take my money. Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see what you could do for a video player on this platform. Holla if you got betas and need testers. This is really done well.

Sorry Robert for the Fox News tactics. I took a fragment of your statement, out of context to dramatize my view. I've already emailed this guy to beg him to either add video support and podcast or to make seperate apps. I do feel like someone at Microsoft should contact this guy for not just programming, but for his opinions, insight, and suggestions. I can only imagine what this guy could pull off with a massive budget and an entire team under him, in which to commandm

Actually, I hope such developers stay independent. This gives them the creative flexibility and independence to continue developing high quality apps. They lose the flexibility being part of an existing vision and bureaucracy. Just my thought.

As much as I'd like to stay independent, I've not made much money out of it. I'd prefer to be able to get the big contracts, like the official Last.FM app, or even Xbox music, and make them good. They're what everyone else will be using, so why not make them great instead? :P
Of course, the problem I've seen so far with "official" application is that there's a lot less lee-way in design and implementation freedom. The person paying the contract has their own ideas, which unfortunately aren't that great, or are very restricting, and if you don't listen they probably won't pay. Ridiculous levels of bureaucracy.

Exactly, it's usable. It's not attractive, enjoyable or powerful, it's usable. It plays music. Just make sure you don't want to play a single album when looking at a specific artist though, because you can't, you have to open up the album view and search for the name of that album. All while looking at a sea of endless grey blah.

Actually I had the same delimia until I finally realized the power of Xbox Music. I've come from iPod/iPhones ecosystem and experience to get music on my device was to sync. Then I started looking at Xbox music and read a bit more about it, you can LOAD anything from the store on your phone as long as you are suscribed.
That is awesome, MS is really missing the boat on how this should be marketed, yes it's a streaming service, yes it's store, but most importantly it's huge music libarary that loans out anything.

You haven't used the Zune desktop app then. That app was farrrr more powerful than the Xbox Music app. And equally if not more beautiful. I'm glad I kept the install files for the Zune app. I'm using it until Xbox Music app is fixed and actually usable.

I spent 5 hours cleaning up my music in Zune a little more then a month ago. Xbox music sees nothing Zune does. Artist, album, year. Everything is unknown. I hate windows libraries and it seems that is another thing Xbox Music relies heavily on. Just a mess, though we all know that.

I might try this app out if I ever get an rt device, otherwise sticking with Zune.

Not sure why msft made this difficult... All they had to do was rebrand the Zune desktop and re-point whatever necessary data to the new store and this app would rule. Everytime I show people the Zune software and 'playing now' stuff, they love it and can't believe that the software is 4 years old. They just chose to ignore it or were sucked into iTunes world.

HOLY CRAP!! THIS IS WHAT XBOX MUSIC SHOULD HAD BEEN!! Oh my good dog!!

WOW! This app looks like something of a Nokia Music app! My oh my! Yes, whoever repsonsible for Xbox Music shouuld be fired and the developer of Music Info NEEDS to be hired on!! THIS, is the quintessential metro designed app for Windows 8!

This app is one of the best period. Had no problem. Spending money on it. One feature it doesn't have and maybe MS removed this feature on WP also, live tile works when playing music but when your done it goes to the regular icon and not the last artist you played. WP had that.